Anyone else thinking 2020 will be similar to 1984?

[AN63093]

@Hindsight

Well, I do think there are certainly competing versions that have emerged out of the Dems autopsy, but I think it might be simpler than that.  In my opinion, I think the Dems just simply despised Trump and his win was incredibly unexpected, so the party rank-and-file is still in a "recovery" state.

Regarding the first point, unfortunately I do not have a good statistic to point to on this, but at least from my perspective, Trump seemed uniquely able to push Dems' buttons... which, when added to his generally inflammatory nature, the fact that he was touching on some sensitive issues that both parties were not addressing, and finally that many of his campaign antics have continued well into 2017... well, it's not entirely surprising that the intensity of the dislike has reached previously unheard of levels.  Again, I'm making this point mainly by way of anecdotes, but I don't think I've seen anything like some of the histrionic outrage I've seen on places like Facebook and news stories comments and so on.. at least since I began following elections in the early 90s.

To the second point, Trump's election was very unexpected, which by itself might not be terribly remarkable, but in this case I think that unfortunately many Dems were lured into a false sense of confidence.  We all remember the models put out there by Huff Post and the NY Times and so on, that had Clinton's win probability up at 98% (in the case of HuffPost, 85% with the NYT).  Now, I would hope that most on this forum were a little more savvy than to believe that nonsense, but can we say that about the average Dem voter?  On top of that you add in Trump's bellicose style and many Dems (heck, many Republicans for that matter) simply did not think it possible that someone like that could have been elected.  Which may sound silly in retrospect, but it wasn't at the time (I'm guilty of it myself- I did not think Trump would win, although I also did think there was quite a bit of groupthink within the Democrats and his chances were being severely underestimated).

So you add in those two factors and it's wholly unsurprising that most Dems would still be in a bit of a shocked state, recovering if you will, from the election.  But I think this will pass, and has already started to pass, and eventually a new "conventional wisdom" will arise over "what went wrong" in 2016.  Whether these theories correctly assess the election, I cannot say, nor do I think I'm smart enough to do so myself... my general point in this thread so far has merely been that we cannot be certain that any emerging theory will actually address mistakes that were made.  However, I will say that your two trains of thought are possible contenders for what becomes the "new conventional wisdom."

Again, I don't know whether one theory or another is ultimately better for the Dems' future election chances, but I do think we can safely say that whatever becomes the prevailing theory could have a significant impact on what candidate ultimately gets the nomination.  

[Beet]

@Hindsight

Well, I do think there are certainly competing versions that have emerged out of the Dems autopsy, but I think it might be simpler than that.  In my opinion, I think the Dems just simply despised Trump and his win was incredibly unexpected, so the party rank-and-file is still in a "recovery" state.

Regarding the first point, unfortunately I do not have a good statistic to point to on this, but at least from my perspective, Trump seemed uniquely able to push Dems' buttons... which, when added to his generally inflammatory nature, the fact that he was touching on some sensitive issues that both parties were not addressing, and finally that many of his campaign antics have continued well into 2017... well, it's not entirely surprising that the intensity of the dislike has reached previously unheard of levels.  Again, I'm making this point mainly by way of anecdotes, but I don't think I've seen anything like some of the histrionic outrage I've seen on places like Facebook and news stories comments and so on.. at least since I began following elections in the early 90s.

To the second point, Trump's election was very unexpected, which by itself might not be terribly remarkable, but in this case I think that unfortunately many Dems were lured into a false sense of confidence.  We all remember the models put out there by Huff Post and the NY Times and so on, that had Clinton's win probability up at 98% (in the case of HuffPost, 85% with the NYT).  Now, I would hope that most on this forum were a little more savvy than to believe that nonsense, but can we say that about the average Dem voter?  On top of that you add in Trump's bellicose style and many Dems (heck, many Republicans for that matter) simply did not think it possible that someone like that could have been elected.  Which may sound silly in retrospect, but it wasn't at the time (I'm guilty of it myself- I did not think Trump would win, although I also did think there was quite a bit of groupthink within the Democrats and his chances were being severely underestimated).

So you add in those two factors and it's wholly unsurprising that most Dems would still be in a bit of a shocked state, recovering if you will, from the election.  But I think this will pass, and has already started to pass, and eventually a new "conventional wisdom" will arise over "what went wrong" in 2016.  Whether these theories correctly assess the election, I cannot say, nor do I think I'm smart enough to do so myself... my general point in this thread so far has merely been that we cannot be certain that any emerging theory will actually address mistakes that were made.  However, I will say that your two trains of thought are possible contenders for what becomes the "new conventional wisdom."

Again, I don't know whether one theory or another is ultimately better for the Dems' future election chances, but I do think we can safely say that whatever becomes the prevailing theory could have a significant impact on what candidate ultimately gets the nomination.  

Before the election, when I suggested Hillary would/could lose, I was viciously attacked by other Democrats. I was mercilessly mocked, and people called me a "weather vane that always points in the wrong direction." There were a couple users here, including one called Joe Republic and another who is still around, BRTD, who especially disliked me.

I remember early in the GE campaign (literally days after the D convention ended), I posted a thread about how Youngstown, Ohio could flip to Trump, and the rest of the thread was spent arguing about whether a county that went for Obama by 28 points would flip (it ultimately stayed with Clinton, by just 3 points). Nobody wanted to discuss my advice for the campaign:

I don't think she can afford to completely give up on it. It usually gives D's a 25 point margin. She needs to emphasize her anti-TPP stance, and revive her call for a trade timeout from her 2008 campaign when she said NAFTA didn't deliver on its promises, and highlight her anti-trade voting record in the Senate.

Here's another post of mine from September:

So Hillary is blowing it because of things Trump's doing? The perfect metaphor for media coverage of this election. They couldn't even make an article about Hillary, about Hillary.

1. Hillary's not appealing to working class white voters, and there are a lot of them.
2. America's party system is turning into a South Africa-style race-based system.
3. The media is giving Trump free press (e.g., all three networks covering his rally, none covering hers if it's at the same time), and holding Clinton to a higher standard.
4. Hillary hasn't cut ties to her foundation.
5. Hillary's not appealing to working class white voters, and there are a lot of them.

Notice how I mentioned white working class voters twice, to emphasize the importance of the demographic. People called me a pearl-clutcher and said it was mathematically impossible for Trump to be landsliding among working class whites in the Midwest because Hillary had to be winning Wisconsin and Michigan.

I still believe that if the Clinton campaign had run on my advice at the time, they would have retained better in Youngstown, and by extension Ohio, and won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which have similar concerns about trade and jobs. Now I really don't mean to sound presumptuous or arrogant, but- I'm confident enough about that to be flabbergasted and enraged by the fact that I, an IT worker without a career in politics who posts on an amateur forum, could have come up with a better strategy last August than the highly paid elite consultants given the responsibility of running strategy for the national campaign, people like Joel Benenson. Maybe someone should give me a PM and hire me as a strategist.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

@Hindsight

Well, I do think there are certainly competing versions that have emerged out of the Dems autopsy, but I think it might be simpler than that.  In my opinion, I think the Dems just simply despised Trump and his win was incredibly unexpected, so the party rank-and-file is still in a "recovery" state.

Regarding the first point, unfortunately I do not have a good statistic to point to on this, but at least from my perspective, Trump seemed uniquely able to push Dems' buttons... which, when added to his generally inflammatory nature, the fact that he was touching on some sensitive issues that both parties were not addressing, and finally that many of his campaign antics have continued well into 2017... well, it's not entirely surprising that the intensity of the dislike has reached previously unheard of levels.  Again, I'm making this point mainly by way of anecdotes, but I don't think I've seen anything like some of the histrionic outrage I've seen on places like Facebook and news stories comments and so on.. at least since I began following elections in the early 90s.

To the second point, Trump's election was very unexpected, which by itself might not be terribly remarkable, but in this case I think that unfortunately many Dems were lured into a false sense of confidence.  We all remember the models put out there by Huff Post and the NY Times and so on, that had Clinton's win probability up at 98% (in the case of HuffPost, 85% with the NYT).  Now, I would hope that most on this forum were a little more savvy than to believe that nonsense, but can we say that about the average Dem voter?  On top of that you add in Trump's bellicose style and many Dems (heck, many Republicans for that matter) simply did not think it possible that someone like that could have been elected.  Which may sound silly in retrospect, but it wasn't at the time (I'm guilty of it myself- I did not think Trump would win, although I also did think there was quite a bit of groupthink within the Democrats and his chances were being severely underestimated).

So you add in those two factors and it's wholly unsurprising that most Dems would still be in a bit of a shocked state, recovering if you will, from the election.  But I think this will pass, and has already started to pass, and eventually a new "conventional wisdom" will arise over "what went wrong" in 2016.  Whether these theories correctly assess the election, I cannot say, nor do I think I'm smart enough to do so myself... my general point in this thread so far has merely been that we cannot be certain that any emerging theory will actually address mistakes that were made.  However, I will say that your two trains of thought are possible contenders for what becomes the "new conventional wisdom."

Again, I don't know whether one theory or another is ultimately better for the Dems' future election chances, but I do think we can safely say that whatever becomes the prevailing theory could have a significant impact on what candidate ultimately gets the nomination.  

Before the election, when I suggested Hillary would/could lose, I was viciously attacked by other Democrats. I was mercilessly mocked, and people called me a "weather vane that always points in the wrong direction." There were a couple users here, including one called Joe Republic and another who is still around, BRTD, who especially disliked me.

I remember early in the GE campaign (literally days after the D convention ended), I posted a thread about how Youngstown, Ohio could flip to Trump, and the rest of the thread was spent arguing about whether a county that went for Obama by 28 points would flip (it ultimately stayed with Clinton, by just 3 points). Nobody wanted to discuss my advice for the campaign:

I don't think she can afford to completely give up on it. It usually gives D's a 25 point margin. She needs to emphasize her anti-TPP stance, and revive her call for a trade timeout from her 2008 campaign when she said NAFTA didn't deliver on its promises, and highlight her anti-trade voting record in the Senate.

Here's another post of mine from September:

So Hillary is blowing it because of things Trump's doing? The perfect metaphor for media coverage of this election. They couldn't even make an article about Hillary, about Hillary.

1. Hillary's not appealing to working class white voters, and there are a lot of them.
2. America's party system is turning into a South Africa-style race-based system.
3. The media is giving Trump free press (e.g., all three networks covering his rally, none covering hers if it's at the same time), and holding Clinton to a higher standard.
4. Hillary hasn't cut ties to her foundation.
5. Hillary's not appealing to working class white voters, and there are a lot of them.

Notice how I mentioned white working class voters twice, to emphasize the importance of the demographic. People called me a pearl-clutcher and said it was mathematically impossible for Trump to be landsliding among working class whites in the Midwest because Hillary had to be winning Wisconsin and Michigan.

I still believe that if the Clinton campaign had run on my advice at the time, they would have retained better in Youngstown, and by extension Ohio, and won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which have similar concerns about trade and jobs. Now I really don't mean to sound presumptuous or arrogant, but- I'm confident enough about that to be flabbergasted and enraged by the fact that I, an IT worker without a career in politics who posts on an amateur forum, could have come up with a better strategy last August than the highly paid elite consultants given the responsibility of running strategy for the national campaign, people like Joel Benenson. Maybe someone should give me a PM and hire me as a strategist.

If Hillary had listened to her own campaign people on the ground in Michigan, she would have won Michigan.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-clinton-trump-232547

But regardless of that, she was a bad candidate who did poorly.

[Kevin Nelson]

It’s time to admit Hillary Clinton is an extraordinarily talented politician

Clinton juggernaut hits 2014 campaign trail



The people who tell the Democrat voter base what they are supposed to think were saying something very different!

The Vox article you link to directly undercuts your point.  It starts out by saying "she is widely considered an inept, flawed candidate."  Klein tries to dispute that, but he clearly takes himself as disputing the conventional wisdom.  (E.g., "we don't appreciate Clinton's strengths as a candidate.")  

And even Klein himself, in June 2016, admits she has significant flaws.  "Clinton is not a great campaigner.  She does not give great speeches.  She does not inspire."  This from someone who's trying to defend her!

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

It’s time to admit Hillary Clinton is an extraordinarily talented politician

Clinton juggernaut hits 2014 campaign trail



The people who tell the Democrat voter base what they are supposed to think were saying something very different!

The Vox article you link to directly undercuts your point.  It starts out by saying "she is widely considered an inept, flawed candidate."  Klein tries to dispute that, but he clearly takes himself as disputing the conventional wisdom.  (E.g., "we don't appreciate Clinton's strengths as a candidate.")  

And even Klein himself, in June 2016, admits she has significant flaws.  "Clinton is not a great campaigner.  She does not give great speeches.  She does not inspire."  This from someone who's trying to defend her!

So they hated Bernie so much that they sided with a candidate they knew was absolutely terrible? Sad!

[AN63093]

Jfern, I remember that Politico article when it came out and it's one of the many I actually had in mind in my last couple posts in this thread when I discussed to what degree the Dems have reflected on this election (and how meaningful that reflection was).  I did find the article interesting, and there were certainly elements of the Clinton campaign it highlighted that were truly head-scratching.

On the other hand, and this is also in response to your reply Beet- I've put a lot of thought into this and have gone back and forth.  One emerging theme in the postmortem has been the over-reliance on "Big Data," so to speak, the statistical model and the related projections.. e.g. "demographics is destiny" and so on.  I do think these can be great tools, but a tool is only as useful as the person who wields it.  Letting stubbornness get in the way, or even worse, emotional bias, can eliminate any benefit you get from the models, as Silver learned the hard way in his 538 primary coverage (although, to be fair to him, although I'm not a big fan of his, he did own up to this afterwards).

Yet, on the other hand, although it's been over a decade since I graduated college, I majored in poli sci and have some memory of the "bad old days."  It was getting better then, so not all doom and gloom, but as "Big Data" had yet to truly come on the scene and had not yet taken its place in the zeitgeist, I remember when rigorous statistical analysis was mostly relegated to academic papers and most mainstream political coverage was ghastly, just unbelievably unsophisticated compared to today. So some credit is due to the RCPs and 538s of the world.  Obviously you still have your news stories today such as "so-and-so candidate has more enthusiasm because I saw 5 lawn signs today" but that was like 99% of the coverage in the bad old days.

The way I feel about this is sort of like sports.  You have your advanced statistics, sabermetrics, and so on, and these tools should be used and yes, even relied upon, and people who dismiss them as a bunch of millennial hocus pocus should be rightfully mocked.  But at the same time, you can't manage a team by just reviewing stats and box scores, you still have to go out there and scout players in real life and actually watch the games, so you can pick up on nuance and the like.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and Clinton was just fundamentally flawed at the very beginning, and if we ran 100 alternate timelines, Trump would win a majority of them.  But as I've implied in my prior posts, in the Great Battle of Democratic Autopsies, I rather think that, as most things in life, the truth might be somewhere in the middle- that Clinton (and her campaign) had significant flaws that were neglected by people in her camp, but at the same time she also had some significant advantages that made her a strong candidate and could've won with some minor course corrections, and there is still value in the statistical models.

[60+ GOP Seats After 2018 GUARANTEED]

If Hillary had listened to her own campaign people on the ground in Michigan, she would have won Michigan.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-clinton-trump-232547

But regardless of that, she was a bad candidate who did poorly.

If she won Michigan and even Wisconsin, she still loses the election. Trump won due to 2 states - he had unreal, unbelievable turnout in Florida and Pennsylvania. Both states Clinton HEAVILY contested (held their convention in Philadelphia!).

[MillennialModerate]

LOL the title of the thread is utter silliness, but I'll play along. There are two potential scenarios: One is that Trump changes his tune and his approach and salvaged a small sliver of his image, gets a small handful of legislative accomplishments with most being far right sewage but 1, maybe 2 of them being supported by a majority of Americans - and at the same time the Democrats don't find their collective voice and thus nominate a weak,  vision less, partisan hack who inspires no one at all. In this scenario the popular vote is likely +1 to +2 Dems but the Electoral college is as close as humanly possible and if that happens Trump has a reasonable chance to maybe flip one more state that he didn't win in '16

The more likely scenario is Trump continues to make our country the but of jokes internationally, Trump continues to make himself look more and more of a fool, Trump little by little ravages the traditions of the Republican Party. Trump continues to put his ego ahead of the good of the country. In this scenario all the Democrats have to do is nominate a reasonably moderate, relatable, likable candidate and in that scenario the network maps look like the ocean, a sea of Dem blue. Think 1980 but in reverse.

[Gay Republican]

No dude, sorry.

It's very likely Trump won't even be in office by then and I doubt taking over for a disgraced president will help Pence.  Either way he is doomed on that front.  If he pardons Trump half of the country will despise him no matter what.  If he doesn't the Trump loyalists will try to get him primaried and will sitout the election if he wins the nomination.  Pardoning is probably the safest of these two options as he could possibly have a shot if he wins over enough independents.  However I severely doubt Pence gets anywhere towards a complete turnaround and gets a 520 electoral victory.  THat is lunacy.

Frankly, we'd be lucky if 2020 isn't 1932 all over again. . . . . . . . and I'm saying this as a Republican.

[60+ GOP Seats After 2018 GUARANTEED]

No dude, sorry.

It's very likely Trump won't even be in office by then and I doubt taking over for a disgraced president will help Pence.  Either way he is doomed on that front.  If he pardons Trump half of the country will despise him no matter what.  If he doesn't the Trump loyalists will try to get him primaried and will sitout the election if he wins the nomination.  Pardoning is probably the safest of these two options as he could possibly have a shot if he wins over enough independents.  However I severely doubt Pence gets anywhere towards a complete turnaround and gets a 520 electoral victory.  THat is lunacy.

Frankly, we'd be lucky if 2020 isn't 1932 all over again. . . . . . . . and I'm saying this as a Republican.

"Trump's campaign is surely done now, says nervous man for the seventh time this year."

[MillennialModerate]

No dude, sorry.

It's very likely Trump won't even be in office by then and I doubt taking over for a disgraced president will help Pence.  Either way he is doomed on that front.  If he pardons Trump half of the country will despise him no matter what.  If he doesn't the Trump loyalists will try to get him primaried and will sitout the election if he wins the nomination.  Pardoning is probably the safest of these two options as he could possibly have a shot if he wins over enough independents.  However I severely doubt Pence gets anywhere towards a complete turnaround and gets a 520 electoral victory.  THat is lunacy.

Frankly, we'd be lucky if 2020 isn't 1932 all over again. . . . . . . . and I'm saying this as a Republican.

"Trump's campaign is surely done now, says nervous man for the seventh time this year."

Again, if Dems nominate partisan unlikable hack then maybe you're right.

However it's likely that 2020 is different from the '16 campaign you're referencing because Trump will have a record to stand on and it's a record that both sides don't like (for different reasons) - If Trump continues as is - it'll be the closest thing to a landslide you can get in today's climate

[dw93]

@Hindsight

Well, I do think there are certainly competing versions that have emerged out of the Dems autopsy, but I think it might be simpler than that.  In my opinion, I think the Dems just simply despised Trump and his win was incredibly unexpected, so the party rank-and-file is still in a "recovery" state.

Regarding the first point, unfortunately I do not have a good statistic to point to on this, but at least from my perspective, Trump seemed uniquely able to push Dems' buttons... which, when added to his generally inflammatory nature, the fact that he was touching on some sensitive issues that both parties were not addressing, and finally that many of his campaign antics have continued well into 2017... well, it's not entirely surprising that the intensity of the dislike has reached previously unheard of levels.  Again, I'm making this point mainly by way of anecdotes, but I don't think I've seen anything like some of the histrionic outrage I've seen on places like Facebook and news stories comments and so on.. at least since I began following elections in the early 90s.

To the second point, Trump's election was very unexpected, which by itself might not be terribly remarkable, but in this case I think that unfortunately many Dems were lured into a false sense of confidence.  We all remember the models put out there by Huff Post and the NY Times and so on, that had Clinton's win probability up at 98% (in the case of HuffPost, 85% with the NYT).  Now, I would hope that most on this forum were a little more savvy than to believe that nonsense, but can we say that about the average Dem voter?  On top of that you add in Trump's bellicose style and many Dems (heck, many Republicans for that matter) simply did not think it possible that someone like that could have been elected.  Which may sound silly in retrospect, but it wasn't at the time (I'm guilty of it myself- I did not think Trump would win, although I also did think there was quite a bit of groupthink within the Democrats and his chances were being severely underestimated).

So you add in those two factors and it's wholly unsurprising that most Dems would still be in a bit of a shocked state, recovering if you will, from the election.  But I think this will pass, and has already started to pass, and eventually a new "conventional wisdom" will arise over "what went wrong" in 2016.  Whether these theories correctly assess the election, I cannot say, nor do I think I'm smart enough to do so myself... my general point in this thread so far has merely been that we cannot be certain that any emerging theory will actually address mistakes that were made.  However, I will say that your two trains of thought are possible contenders for what becomes the "new conventional wisdom."

Again, I don't know whether one theory or another is ultimately better for the Dems' future election chances, but I do think we can safely say that whatever becomes the prevailing theory could have a significant impact on what candidate ultimately gets the nomination.  

Before the election, when I suggested Hillary would/could lose, I was viciously attacked by other Democrats. I was mercilessly mocked, and people called me a "weather vane that always points in the wrong direction." There were a couple users here, including one called Joe Republic and another who is still around, BRTD, who especially disliked me.

I remember early in the GE campaign (literally days after the D convention ended), I posted a thread about how Youngstown, Ohio could flip to Trump, and the rest of the thread was spent arguing about whether a county that went for Obama by 28 points would flip (it ultimately stayed with Clinton, by just 3 points). Nobody wanted to discuss my advice for the campaign:

I don't think she can afford to completely give up on it. It usually gives D's a 25 point margin. She needs to emphasize her anti-TPP stance, and revive her call for a trade timeout from her 2008 campaign when she said NAFTA didn't deliver on its promises, and highlight her anti-trade voting record in the Senate.

Here's another post of mine from September:

So Hillary is blowing it because of things Trump's doing? The perfect metaphor for media coverage of this election. They couldn't even make an article about Hillary, about Hillary.

1. Hillary's not appealing to working class white voters, and there are a lot of them.
2. America's party system is turning into a South Africa-style race-based system.
3. The media is giving Trump free press (e.g., all three networks covering his rally, none covering hers if it's at the same time), and holding Clinton to a higher standard.
4. Hillary hasn't cut ties to her foundation.
5. Hillary's not appealing to working class white voters, and there are a lot of them.

Notice how I mentioned white working class voters twice, to emphasize the importance of the demographic. People called me a pearl-clutcher and said it was mathematically impossible for Trump to be landsliding among working class whites in the Midwest because Hillary had to be winning Wisconsin and Michigan.

I still believe that if the Clinton campaign had run on my advice at the time, they would have retained better in Youngstown, and by extension Ohio, and won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which have similar concerns about trade and jobs. Now I really don't mean to sound presumptuous or arrogant, but- I'm confident enough about that to be flabbergasted and enraged by the fact that I, an IT worker without a career in politics who posts on an amateur forum, could have come up with a better strategy last August than the highly paid elite consultants given the responsibility of running strategy for the national campaign, people like Joel Benenson. Maybe someone should give me a PM and hire me as a strategist.

If Hillary had listened to her own campaign people on the ground in Michigan, she would have won Michigan.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michigan-hillary-clinton-trump-232547

But regardless of that, she was a bad candidate who did poorly.

If Hillary listened to her own Husband she would've won. Bill saw this coming and her campaign staff wrote him off as just some old southern Democrat trying to re live the glory days of his Presidency.

[pbrower2a]

Here's what we have now. Ronald Reagan could be abrasive, but he also knew when to back down. Donald Trump doubles down on a pair of two's or three's.

For a replay of 1984 with Donald Trump as the winner just in the popular vote, he needs to have a national approval in the high fifties going into the election. So contrast Reagan to Obama, fairly good analogues for having similar skill sets  and having won similar amounts of the popular vote in their initial elections... Ronald Reagan never had an approval below 52% after November 21, 1983 and had an approval rating of 58% just before the election... which is close to his eventual vote in the election.  Approvals for President Reagan were very stable around the 54% level as until about July 1 and then rose steadily.

So contrast Barack Obama at a si9milar time. Obama had much the same skill sets as Ronald Reagan -- similarly-effective as a speaker, similar victory in percentage of the Presidential vote in the initial election, ability to back down after an error, similarly-effective campaigner.... Obama approval from November 2003 bounced around the middle-to-high 40s from about November 2011 to about September 1, 2012, getting an approval rating of about 51% in the week of the election. That's close to the percentage of the total vote that Obama got in 2012. Obama was not going to win a landslide in either the popular or electoral vote in 2012.

It's also telling that Obama and Reagan shadowed each other at the ends of their Presidencies, with Obama having a 59% approval rating and Reagan having a 63% approval rating in their last nationwide Gallup polls. I'm guessing that the real difference between Reagan and Obama in polling is race.

Donald Trump is far below either Reagan or Obama at an analogous time. Both tried to win over Americans who did not vote for him, and at that Reagan was much more effective. As you will see in a table below, President Trump isn't winning over people who didn't vote for him. Reagan achieved his promises for a longer time than did Obama, but Trump has been terribly ineffective at achieving his promises. Trump says something abrasive and then fails to back down, which is not good for creating support. 

To expect President Trump to be as successful as Obama in 2012 in political survival in the next election, let alone like Reagan in 1984 in a smashing landslide is to expect miracles. I see no evidence of president Trump growing into the job. His limited vocabulary may more reflect the trade talk of people in real estate (cliché) than mental disorder... but that said, neither Reagan nor Obama relied heavily upon numbing cliché to get their point across. He's not going to get better. People in their seventies almost never become more skilled at anything, and the Presidency requires upon multiple talents as well as at least average character to be effective. The near-absence of verbal flexibility of Donald Trump suggests that he will be unable to convince people to do things contrary to their immediate self-interest for something far better. Contrast someone of similar age -- Sir Winston Churchill. Trump could succeed in real estate because if someone disliked his taste in architectural furnishings and himself as a person, there was always someone else who might rent from him. Churchill could convince people that the best purpose in life for people in Great Britain in the bleak summer and autumn of 1940 was to put their lives on the line to keep Great Britain from joining the Hell that into which such countries as Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France had fallen.

..........

OK. Here's the chart of disapproval ratings for President Trump based upon either the latest poll (May, June, or July) or the Gallup composite of polling data from the states (which I have for about thirty states. The Gallup composite is old (I am treating it like a poll from late April as an average). With few exceptions (most obviously Michigan, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania) extant polls correlate closely to the Gallup composite, as I see in such states as Arizona, Iowa, Texas, and Wisconsin. I pick disapproval ratings because those look more likely to stick than approval ratings.
 
I'd guess that disapproval of President Trump is over 80% in the District of Columbia. Assuming that the Congressional districts of Maine and Nebraska go as their states go at-large,  I can count electoral votes by disapproval rating based either upon the Gallup composite or a poll from May or later...

Listing the electoral votes available at levels of disapproval for the President from the lowest levels to the highest

EVB  DSR CHG   EVA   states
 
000   36   11     011    ND WV WY
006   39   16     027    AL OK
022   41   03     030    MT
030   42   21     051    ID KS TN
051   43   23     075    KY LA NE SD
075   44   09     084    SC
084   46   16     100    MO MS
100   47   06     106    AR
106   48   32     138    AK  IN OH
138   50   37     175    GA NC UT
175   51   77     252    FL TX  WI
252   52   06     258    IA
258   53   17     275    AZ NV
275   55   08     283    ME RI
270   56   15     298    DE NM OR
295   57   31     329    CO MN VA
317   58   34     363    IL NJ
347   59   24     387    CT HI WA
383   60   04     391    NH
387   61   16     407    MI
403   62   49     456    NY PA
456   64   10     466    MD
466   66   11     477    MA
477   71   58     535    CA VT
535   80   03     538    DC


EVB -- electoral votes for Trump  BEFORE winning the state(s)
DIS -- disapproval rating
CHG -- change in the number of electoral votes
EVA -- electoral votes for Trump AFTER winning states in this category
'80' is my guess for the District of Columbia.

This is how the states 'fall' if I  use disapproval ratings for the President to predict which states switch from an unnamed opponent to Donald Trump. None of us has any idea of who the Democratic nominee for President will be. But let us assume a free and fair election (without which approval and disapproval are completely irrelevant and the Presidential election is a sham as is American political life in general).

Now for some analysis once I have set my assumptions.

Disapproval levels are extremely disparate. Political attitudes in California are very different from those in West Virginia. That is polarization on lines of statewide partisanship. This polarization is as severe as at any time in American history except just before the Civil War. Any attempt of the federal government to force the political values of West Virginia upon California is likely to lead to hard resistance. Statewide polarization was not as severe in 1984 as it is now, and it is not likely to ameliorate rapidly enough to allow any President to win about half the states by less than 8%.   

Thirteen states were decided by or 8% or less (really 6% or less) in 2016.  A state decided by 8% or more really isn't close.

Going back to other Presidential elections:

2016 -- 13
2012 -- 12
2008 --   8
2004 -- 16
2000 -- 19

...because of a strong third-party or independent candidate I am not mentioning 1992 or 1996

1988 -- 19
1984 --   8 (Reagan won the election by 18.22% in the popular vote)
1980 -- 22
1976 -- 31

The biggest landslides in the Electoral College involved

(1) an incumbent President who had won decisively in the previous election
(2) following a troubled predecessor as President
(3) had significant success in turning around much of the trouble of the predecessor
(4) an unusually-weak opponent
(5) no well-financed and well-organized effort to gut the Incumbent's credibility
(6) polarization between the states either was then or had recently been slight

The last three such elections involved 1984 (Reagan everything but Minnesota), 1972 (Nixon everything but Massachusetts), and 1936 (FDR everything but Maine and Vermont). Obama solved one of the biggest problems of 2008 (a potential reprise of the Great Depression) only to face one of the strongest challengers that an effective President has ever had (Mitt Romney, much stronger than Alf Landon or George McGovern) and to have faced the well-executed effort to revert America into a safe haven for reactionary politics in which those who believe that no human suffering is in excess so long as it turns and indulges a profit can ever be in excess. Besides, Obama had won most of his victories by Reagan-like margins and endured most of his losses by Mondale-style losses, suggesting that there were few ways in which Obama had any chance of winning more states in 2012 than in 2008.   

Now how does Donald Trump compare to Reagan or Nixon, let alone FDR?

For Trump to win a 48-state landslide (everything but California, Vermont, and the District of Columbia) he would have to cut back about 20% of his disapproval rating even in Massachusetts and nearly the same in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan... I don't see that happening. America is just too polarized for that to happen. He is closer to losing Oklahoma and West Virginia  than he is to winning Massachusetts.

In the prologue I have suggested what traits of character preclude President Trump from recovering well enough and quickly enough to win anything close to a landslide. He had few ways of picking up close states of 2016 that he barely lost, but he projects to lose those even bigger in 2020. Some polls of Michigan and Pennsylvania establish that he  has no significant chance of winning either again.

But consider this: President Trump must win states in which his approval rating is as high as 52% now... and then he must win at least two other states. If he should lose Iowa (52% disapproval, and Democrats have won Iowa in five of the last seven Presidential elections), then he will need at least 18 more electoral votes in which he has disapproval ratings -- and even Nevada and Arizona will just get him into a tie in the Electoral College.   

More relevant to this Presidency in 2020 are elections of 1932 and 1980 in which the incumbent got crushed when his administration faced a diplomatic or economic catastrophe and did not meet it well.